The Problem with Forever

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Rider had

spray-painted a heart between our names.

I snapped out of it. “You like me?” His gaze flew to mine. “Yeah, I do. And I know I’ve been with Paige and I’m not going to pretend that meant nothing, but it’s not how I feel for you. Not remotely like how I feel for you. And it’s not because of our past—because of you and I knowing each other for so long,” he said, and the words kept coming out in a rush. “At first, I thought that was why—this attraction I have to you. I thought it was because of everything we’d shared. And then the night I came to your place and you fixed me up, I thought it was just this physical thing.” Pink raced across his cheeks. “And it is most definitely a physical thing, but it wasn’t just that. I think part of me knew that from the very first time you said my name.”

AHHHHH

In that moment, I knew I couldn’t hold what he used to do against him. Rider…Jayden…so many other people were a product of their environment. Some got out. Others didn’t. Rider was right. A lot of it was luck. Sometimes it was determination. But mostly it was luck, and I was the luckiest of them all.

Rider had said nothing lasted forever, but some things, some scars, ran too deep to ever fade away.

I was in love with him. I knew that much was true. Love was the swelling, hopeful feeling in my chest every time I saw him. Love was the way I could forget about everything when I was with him. Love was the catch in my breath when he looked at me in his intense way. Love was the gasp he could draw out of me with the simplest of touches. Love was the way I could…I could be myself around him, know that I didn’t need to be perfect or worry about what he was thinking, because he accepted me. And all of that? Love scared the hell out of me.

“You’ve given up on yourself before anyone else has a chance to.”

And it was knowing that I could still be…still be afraid of everything, but not letting that fear stop me from living.

Forever was something we all took for granted, but the problem with forever was that it really didn’t exist.

I remembered him ranting once

about how if someone coughed, they were given time off from work, but if someone was mentally fatigued, they were expected to suck it up.

The fact that I couldn’t comprehend such an act showed, despite my upbringing, how incredibly privileged I was. These were things that I didn’t have to worry about, not in the way others did.

Then it was me who put Rider back together.

My past was a part of me and it molded who I was today, but it was not the sum

of who I was to become. It did not control me.